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OTHER
Midterms
Analysis: The Wrong Fight at the Wrong Time for the GOP
Roll Call // Stuart Rothenberg // June 21, 2018
Summary:
You need to hand it to President Donald Trump, his entire administration and his party. It takes more than a little chutzpah to act in a way that seems callous to the concerns of children. First, it was gun control. Now it is immigration in general, and separating children from their parents in particular. If this is the way to winning the midterms, it’s hard to see how. Republicans have talked for decades about crime, drugs, national security, traditional values, the dangers associated with big government and helping businesses produce economic growth. GOP candidates are comfortable talking about those themes during campaigns, and the party’s voters have become accustomed to hearing those issues addressed.
Republicans have a millennial women problem
Vox // Li Zhou // June 20, 2018
Summary: If Democrats retake control of Congress in November, it will be in part due to their strength with young women. A new survey from the Pew Research Center finds young women — between the ages of 18 and 34 — far and away prefer the Democratic congressional candidate in their districts. Their preference for Democrats is significantly higher than that of women of other age groups. Women overall are likely to lean blue, with 54 percent supporting or leaning toward the Democratic candidate in their district this fall, versus 38 percent who favor the Republican candidate. But 68 percent of young women are choosing Democrats, compared to 24 percent who prefer Republicans. Younger men, meanwhile, give Republican candidates the slight edge.
District court judges file for reelection
Mountaineer // KylePerrottie // June 20, 2018
Summary: The filing period for North Carolina’s judicial races has begun. Those hoping to get a seat on the bench had the opportunity to file beginning Monday and can do so through June 29. According to a press release sent out by the state board of elections, “voters across the state … will elect about three dozen superior court judges and about 120 district court judges.” A change from prior judicial elections, 2018 will be a partisan election, meaning people will be able to see whether a candidate belongs to a political party, a move that is almost ubiquitously unpopular in Haywood County’s legal community. Here’s a look at the three individuals, all sitting judges, who have already made their intent to file known:
Constitutional Amendments
Right to hunt and lowering state income tax rate among proposed state constitutional amendments
Greensboro N&R // AP // June 20, 2018
Summary: North Carolina Republican legislators are ready to advance proposed constitutional amendments, some which could make it more attractive for conservatives to go vote in November. The House and Senate scheduled committee meetings Wednesday to discuss legislation to alter the state constitution this fall. A Senate panel plans to take up a statewide referendum whether to put the right to hunt and fish in the constitution. And a House committee wants to consider an amendment to lower the state's income tax rate cap from 10 percent to 5.5 percent. House Rules Committee Chairman David Lewis also says he expects a constitutional proposal requiring photo identification to vote to be submitted sometime in the next week. Lewis also wants an amendment clarifying the governance of the state elections board.
Right to hunt and fish amendment resurfaces
WRAL // Travis Fain // June 20, 2018
Summary: Voters would be asked to enshrine the right to hunt, fish and harvest wildlife in the North Carolina constitution under a measure that cleared the Senate Wednesday. Senate Bill 677 wouldn't change state hunting regulations, its sponsor said, and the amendment language specifically says it's not intended to modify various provisions of state law, but legislative staff said similar amendments in other states have been cited in legal challenges. Twenty-one other states have a similar constitutional provision, including all of the states that border North Carolina, according to supporters. With Wednesday's 44-4 vote in the Senate, the measure heads to the House for further discussion. A similar proposal cleared the Senate two years ago but stalled in the House.
Proposed income tax cap amendment advances in House
WRAL // Travis Fain // June 20, 2018
Summary: Republican legislators moved a proposed constitutional amendment to cap state income taxes at 5.5 percent through committee Wednesday over objections from Democrats who said the bill would handcuff future General Assemblies. When recession hits, it's going to mean budget cuts and sales tax increases that hit the poor hardest, critics warned. Republicans pointed to the upsurge in North Carolina's economy since they took over in 2011 and began cutting taxes. They pointed to an increased "rainy day" fund and dismissed the dire warnings Democrats have voiced for years over problems Kansas has experienced after the GOP majority there cut taxes.
North Carolina State Employees
Central Prison inmates attack staffer
WRAL // Staff // June 19, 2018
Summary: An employee at Central Prison was assaulted by two inmates Tuesday afternoon, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. Inmates Jaquan Lane and Andrew Ellis assaulted Unit Manager Brent Soucier with a homemade weapon in a housing area of the maximum-security prison at about 12:30 p.m., authorities said. Soucier, 44, a 19-year veteran at the prison, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of a serious injury, and both inmates were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said.
A day after brutal attack on prison manager, 2 more officers assaulted at NC prison
N&O // Ames Alexander, Collin Warrne-Hicks, Ron Gallagher // June 20, 2018
Summary: Less than a day after a brutal assault on a high-ranking manager at Central Prison, two more officers at the prison were assaulted Wednesday morning, officials said. The officers, whose names have not been released, were assaulted by an inmate at about 8 a.m. in a prison dining area, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety. The inmate hit the officers with his fists, officials said. The injured officers were treated at an outside medical facility and released. Brent Soucier, the prison unit manager who was attacked Tuesday afternoon, remained in stable condition at a nearby hospital, officials said. Armed with a homemade weapon, inmates cut, beat and repeatedly stabbed Soucier, sources said.
Rural NC
How small towns can rebuild from the ground up
N&O // Charles D. Thompson Jr. // June 20, 2018
Summary: When I think of the crisis of job loss in rural America, I always think of Dennis, my best friend from high school. We went our separate ways in 1975 when I left our small town in the Virginia mountains to head to college. He stayed behind, believing that he could work his way to success at home. Honest and always ready to do more than people ask, he is a prime example of the very bedrock of small town values and productivity. People like him built America. But after decades of factory re-locations and closings, as highlighted by news of tariffs and an impending trade war, that America is barely recognizable.
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment does not ‘abuse’ the Constitution
N&O // LTE // June 20, 2018
Summary: Regarding “States should leave the ERA back in the ’70s” (June 17): We reject George Will’s thesis that the Equal Rights Amendment would somehow be “abuse of the Constitution.” We fail to see how finally ensuring the rights of women in the Constitution is anything other than closing an egregious gap in the Constitution’s protections. Will’s implicit assertion that the 14th Amendment should be enough to guarantee women protection against discrimination based on gender flies in the face of the fact that race, religion, and national origin are categories that receive strict scrutiny in discrimination cases, whereas gender is only given intermediate scrutiny.
Opioid/Suicide Crisis
Suicides, overdoses stagger US
BlueRidgeNow // Opinion // June 20, 2018
Summary: “Deaths of despair” sound like something that would be found in miserable, wretched places — refugee camps, war-torn cities, famine-wracked villages in poverty-stricken countries. In fact, the term has emerged to describe a crisis in one of the most advanced societies on the planet — ours. The United States is in the grip of two lethal epidemics: suicides and drug overdoses. Suicides have risen by 30 percent since 1999 — amounting to nearly 45,000 in 2016. Fatal drug overdoses also have soared. In 1999, they claimed some 17,000 lives; in 2016, the number exceeded 64,000. The biggest increase involves opioids. These are staggering figures. On a typical day, some 175 people die of drug overdoses and 123 by their own hand. That’s one “death by despair” every five minutes. And much of this is happening without provoking an urgent public response.
Immigration Bills
GOP immigration bills on brink of collapse
Politico // Rachel Bade, Heather Caygle, John Bresnahan // June 20, 2018
Summary: Speaker Paul Ryan’s carefully crafted immigration bill appears headed toward defeat after tensions boiled over in the House ahead of Thursday’s vote. In a rare dispute on the House floor Wednesday, Ryan and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows argued loudly with each other over what exactly was going to see a vote. At one point, looking down his glasses, Meadows angrily gestured at Ryan. Meadows later told reporters that Ryan was putting the wrong version of a conservative bill up for a vote and that there were two other provisions that were left out of the leadership-backed “compromise“ legislation he'd helped negotiate with moderate Republicans. “The compromise bill is not ready for prime time,” Meadows said. “There are things that were supposed to be in the compromise bill that are not in the compromise bill that we had all agreed to.” The public spat is the latest sign of how much trouble the GOP’s immigration push is in. But both the “compromise” bill and the more conservative plan were likely to fail even before the heated exchange between Ryan and Meadows.
Immigrant Family Separation/ Child Detention
Trumpism, Realized
The Atlantic // Adam Serwer // June 20, 2018
Summary: To preserve the political and cultural preeminence of white Americans against a tide of demographic change, the administration has settled on a policy of systemic child abuse. The policy’s cruelty is its purpose: By inflicting irreparable trauma on children and their families, the administration intends to persuade those looking to America for a better life to stay home. The barbarism of deliberately inflicting suffering on children as coercion, though, has forced the Trump administration and its allies in the conservative press to offer three contradictory defenses. First, there’s the denial that the policy exists: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen declared, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” Not so, the administration’s defenders in the media have insisted. The policy is both real and delightful. The conservative radio host Laura Ingraham called the uproar “hilarious,” adding sarcastically that “the U . S . is so inhumane to provide entertainment, sports, tutoring, medical, dental, four meals a day, and clean, decent housing for children whose parents irresponsibly tried to bring them across the border illegally.” She also described the facilities as “essentially summer camps.” On Fox News, the Breitbart editor Joel Pollak argued that the detention facilities offer children both basic necessities and the chance to receive an education. “This is a place where they really have the welfare of the kids at heart,” he said.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF: Trump Wasn't First to Seperate Families, but Policy Was Still Evil
WRAL // CBC Opinion / June 21, 2018
Summary: President Trump finally caved to public pressure and promised to stop separating children from parents at the border. After long insisting that he couldn’t do anything about this, he snapped his fingers and changed the policy that he had denied was a policy. Yet the next steps remain unclear and of uncertain legality. Will there be internment camps? This hazy juncture is a useful opportunity to draw lessons. Trump is right that he didn’t begin the practice of wrenching crying children from their parents. This fits into a long and shameful history:
Protesters in Raleigh speak out against separating families at the border
N&O // Rashaan Ayesh // June 20, 2018
Summary: Twelve-year-old Uriel Rodriguez spoke in both English and Spanish as he addressed a crowd gathered in downtown Raleigh on Wednesday. “I am proudly Hispanic and the son of immigrant parents who crossed the border searching for a better life," Uriel said. "In search of the great American dream." Hundreds gathered at Bicentennial Plaza on Wednesday afternoon to protest the separation of Hispanic families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Hours earlier, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to quell a nationwide outcry over the practice of splitting up asylum-seeking parents and children at the southern border.
Hundreds protest Trump immigration policy in Wilmington
StarNews // Adam Wagner // June 20, 2018
Summary: About 300 residents stood outside Rep. David Rouzer’s New Hanover County office for an hour Wednesday afternoon protesting an immigration policy being enacted in their names on the U.S.-Mexico border more than 1,300 miles away. “The Trump Administration justifies this inhumane separation of families and detention of babies because they are simply ‘enforcing the law.’ Law is a social construct, created and enforced by those in power. As such, law often, in fact, is not what is right or just,” Vanessa Gonzalez, a Wilmington immigration attorney, told the crowd. Gonzalez also noted that family separation is a matter of administration policy, not law. According to the Associated Press, the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy means adults caught trying to cross into the United States are referred for criminal prosecution, leading to detention for adults pending trial. Children are then separated because they are not charged with a crime.
Our Opinion: What will our leaders do next about those immigrant families?
Greensboro N&R // Editorial // June 20, 2018
Summary: President Trump says he didn’t like the video and photographs that he saw of parents and children being separated after they were caught trying to sneak into the United States, so he did what he had said for days that he couldn’t do: He signed an executive order to end that process. Just like that, President Trump relented under a tsunami of bad faith and immoral missteps as he and his staff found calmer waters with what they called “Affording Congress the Opportunity to Address Family Separation.” It was a nice effort to address wrongdoing and toss a lit stick of dynamite over the wall to the legislative branch.
Immigrant children forcibly injected with drugs, lawsuit claims
Reveal News // Matt Smith, Aura Bogado // June 20, 2018
Summary: President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy is creating a zombie army of children forcibly injected with medications that make them dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated, according to legal filings that show immigrant children in U.S. custody subdued with powerful psychiatric drugs. Children held at Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor south of Houston that houses immigrant minors, described being held down and injected, according to the federal court filings. The lawsuit alleges that children were told they would not be released or see their parents unless they took medication and that they only were receiving vitamins. Parents and the children themselves told attorneys the drugs rendered them unable to walk, afraid of people and wanting to sleep constantly, according to affidavits filed April 23 in U.S. District Court in California.
Flores agreement: Trump’s executive order to end family separation might run afoul of a 1997 court ruling
Vox // Dara Lind, Dylan Scott // June 20, 2018
Summary: The solution to the crisis of family separation at the US-Mexico border, the Trump administration has decided, is to get rid of a 1997 federal court decision that strictly limits the government’s ability to keep children in immigration detention. The administration has fingered Flores v. Reno, or the “Flores agreement,” as the reason it is “forced” to separate parents from their children to prosecute them. It claims that because it cannot keep parents and children in immigration detention together, it has no choice but to detain parents in immigration detention (after they’ve been criminally prosecuted for illegal entry) and send the children to the Department of Health and Human Services as “unaccompanied alien children.”
In reversal, Trump signs order stopping family separation
N&O // Jill Colvin, Colleen Long // June 20, 2018
Summary: Bowing to pressure from anxious allies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday ending the process of separating children from families after they are detained crossing the U.S. border illegally. It was a dramatic turnaround for Trump, who has been insisting, wrongly, that his administration had no choice but to separate families apprehended at the border because of federal law and a court decision.
Tech CEOs voice opposition to family separations at the border
LA Times // Bloomberg // June 19, 2018
Summary: Tech heavyweights from Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook to Facebook Inc. boss Mark Zuckerberg joined a chorus of Americans denouncing the Trump administration’s policy of separating children in the U.S. illegally from their families at the border. But it’s unclear whether the industry has any real leverage to stop the practice. Top executives from Airbnb Inc., Box Inc. and Twilio Inc. denounced the separations, which started after the U.S. announced in April to pursue criminal charges against people who attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border without proper documents. More than 2,000 children have so far been taken from their parents and are being kept in detention facilities. “It’s heartbreaking to see the images and hear the sounds of the kids. Kids are the most vulnerable people in any society. I think that what’s happening is inhumane, it needs to stop,” Apple’s Cook said in Dublin on Tuesday, according to the Irish Times. Some, including Zuckerberg and YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki, implored their social-media followers to donate to legal and humanitarian organizations that support the migrant families.
Inside Scoop: Budd, Manning dislike border separations
Greensboro N&R // Taft Wireback // June 19, 2018
Summary: With the national discourse reeling over the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents who illegally enter the United States from Mexico, both the Republican incumbent in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District and his Democratic challenger tackled the subject in recent news releases. The long and short of it is that neither U.S. Rep. Ted Budd of Advance nor his Democratic opponent, Kathy Manning of Greensboro, likes the practice.
Is the separation of families a 'cruel' policy or result of a broken system?
Charlotte Observer // Jim Morrill // June 19, 2018
Summary: North Carolina's Republican lawmakers on Tuesday blamed a broken system for the separation of more than 2,300 immigrant children from their families, while Democrats blasted the policy as "cruel" and "immoral." With photos showing children housed behind chain link fences, the policy has drawn fire from lawmakers on both sides as well as CEOs and religious leaders. Republicans sought to put the issue in the context of broader immigration policy.
Allen Johnson: Does anyone in the GOP have the courage to do the right thing?
Greensboro N&R // Allen Johnson // June 19, 2018
Summary: We may finally have found a case where significant numbers of Republicans are willing to oppose President Donald Trump,” Richard Waldman writes in The Washington Post. “And all it took was sobbing children being torn from their parents' arms.” I don’t know about that. The cult of Trump is so rock-solid. And the spines of elected Republicans are so … not. Even when they condemn the cruelty of a policy that tears apart immigrant families at the border, many avoid saying much else … especially the T-word.
GOP Tax Scam
TPC: 2017 Tax Law Could Leave Most Low- and Middle-Income Families Worse Off
CBPP // Brendan Duke // June 20, 2018
Summary: The new tax law could wind up harming the vast majority of low- and middle-income families, an updated Tax Policy Center (TPC) analysis shows. It considers several plausible ways to pay for the tax cuts and concludes, “when the notion that the tax cuts must be paid for is taken into account, many households are made worse off.” That’s because budget cuts enacted to pay for the tax cuts — which will cost $1.9 trillion over ten years — could reduce low- and middle-income families’ incomes by more than the tax cuts will increase them.
Thom Tillis
Here's what Mitch McConnell and Senate GOP want to do about immigrant family separations
N&O // Brian Murphy // June 20, 2018
Summary: President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to quell a nationwide outcry over the practice of splitting up asylum-seeking parents and children at the southern border — but that doesn't end the controversy in Congress. Trump told lawmakers that he thought there should also be a legislative solution. And the same day as his order, more than half of Senate Republicans signed onto a bill requiring migrant parents and children be kept together during legal proceedings. The proposed legislation, which includes additional immigration judges, has 27 Republican sponsors or co-sponsors, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
We asked 8 Republican senators how they plan to address family separations — if at all
Vox // Tara Golshan // June 20, 2018
Summary: President Donald Trump’s administration has made it very clear: The only way the administration will stop separating families at the border is if Congress puts an end to it. To date, more than 2,300 children, from infants to teenagers, have been separated from their families under the Trump administration — the result of a “zero tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all asylum seekers who crossed the border illegally. Trump’s administration is acting like its hands are tied; “Congress alone can fix it,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters at a press conference about the family separation crisis.
Richard Burr
Burr joins with Dems to block Trump plan to cut $15B in spending slated for kids' health insurance, other programs
Greenboro N&R // AP // June 21, 2018
Summary: In a rebuke to President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday blocked a White House plan to cut almost $15 billion in unused government money slated for children’s health insurance and other programs.Two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Burr of North Carolina — joined with Democrats to defeat the measure. Fifty senators opposed the plan and 48 supported it. The so-called rescissions package would take a mostly symbolic whack at government spending because it would eliminate leftover funding that likely would not have been spent anyway. The name comes from the fact the plan would have rescinded previously approved spending.
Senate rejects billions in Trump spending cuts as 2 Republicans, including Collins, vote ‘no’
Washington Post // Erica Werner // June 20, 2018
Summary: The Senate on Wednesday rejected billions in spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration as two Republicans joined all Democrats in voting no. The 48-50 vote rebuffed a White House plan to claw back some $15 billion in spending previously approved by Congress — a show of fiscal responsibility that was encouraged by conservative lawmakers outraged over a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March. The House had approved the so-called rescissions package earlier this month. But passage had never been assured in the Senate, where a number of Republicans had been cool to the idea from the start. Nevertheless, Wednesday’s outcome was startling because one of the opposing votes came from Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who does not normally buck the White House or GOP leadership. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate and one of the Republicans who most frequently side with Democrats, cast the other GOP vote against the cuts.
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